Armenian Liza Ganimian

1. Language description

West Armenian is an isolated branch of the Indo-European family of languages originating two centuries before Christ. The language has 36 dialects that can be divided into two groups: East-Armenian and West-Armenian. East-Armenian is spoken mainly in Armenia. West- Armenian is considered to be the language of the diaspora and is spoken by Armenian groups that, after the genocide, went to Europe, South America and the United States. These groups each speak their own sub-dialect of Armenian (Vaux, 1998).

East and West Armenian have the same lexical basis. Due to migration West Armenian dialects know many loan words an neologisms. (Kasparian, 2007). ‘New’ words tend to be adapted to the fonotactic rules of Armenian. (Donabedian, 2000).

The Armenian version of Speakaboo is based on West Armenian.

Phonological system

The phonological systems of East and West Armenian each have the same 5 vowels: : /a/, /i/, /ɛ/, /ɔ/, /u/. The schwa (/ə/) is also part of the vowel system but is considered an epenthetic vowel, meaning a vowel is inserted to break up a cluster. The (/ə/) divides consonant groups (Vaux 1998, Godson, 2004).

Table 1 West Armenian consonant system (Donabedian, 2018) Coronal Dorsal Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolair Postalveolair Palatal Velair Uvulair Farynaal Glottal

plosive p b t d k g nasal m n trill r fricative (f) v s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ h affricate ʦ ʣ ʧ ʤ liquida l Semi j vowel

Het West Armeens kent 24 consonanten. Het consonantsysteem van het Oost Armeens wordt West Armenian has 24 different consonants. Additional to those, in East Armenian aspirated versions of stops and affricates exist (Vaux, 1998). The phoneme /f/ only later became part of the Armenian consonant system due to the use of loanwords. The /f/ is not a part of Speakaboo, because this sound does not appear in the lexicon of young children.

Armenian has its own alphabet, consisting of 38 letters.

Stress In Armenian stress is normally on the last syllable. Morphological processes can change that, and then stress will be on the last but one syllable.

2. Acquisition of consonants

Until recently no research was done into the phonological development in Armenian children. A large Armenian community lives in France, and over there the author of this description has made a strat with this research. She assessed 52 Armenian-French children with the West Armenian version of Speakaboo. In table 2 can be found how often a phoneme is pronounced correctly. The scores are graded from best to worst for the youngest age group.

Table 2 Percentage consonants correct per consonant per age group (Ganimian, 2019)

n=19 n=14 n=12 n=7 36-47 mth 48-59 mth 60 -71 mth 72-84 mth p 100 100 100 95,2 k 100 100 100 100 t 98 100 100 98,6 l 97,4 96,4 100 100 m 96,5 100 100 100 n 95,1 98,6 99,4 100 z 94,7 100 100 100 g 93,7 96,4 99,1 97,1 s 92,6 100 100 100 v 91,2 97,6 97,2 95,2 d 86,3 98,6 100 100 b 86 97,6 94,4 95,2 x 84,2 89,3 100 100 h 84,2 96,4 100 100 γ 83,2 98,6 98,3 100 tʃ 78,9 100 100 100 j 78,3 92,9 100 92,9 ts 78,2 96 97,6 100 ʃ 68,4 73,8 100 100 dz 68,4 92,9 98 100 ʤ 63,2 53,3 100 92,9 ʒ 52,6 100 91,7 100 r 43,7 85,7 85 100

The voiceless stops seem to be acquired earliest. The /r/ seems to be acquired latest.

3. Common phonological processes

Gliding and lateralization of the /r/ are most common in the youngest age group.

4. Allowed lexical variation

No data available.

5. Performance of typically developing Armenian toddlers: PCC

Early 2019 52 children were tested with the Armenian version of Speakaboo. The children aged between 3 and 7 year old and were growing up with Armenian as mother tongue. The children visisted a private school in which the first 2 years the children were exclusively addressed in Armenian, and in the following years both French and Armenian are used in the lessons.

The test is done by the author, with a paper version of Speakaboo, a lotto game with the same items as in the Speakaboo app. The children needed to match pictures to pictures on the lotto, and after that name the picture. If the child did not name the picture spontaneous, the word was prompted. If the child did not want to imitate either, the researcher went on to the next item. One of the aims of these tests was to find out what the percentage consonants correct (PCC) were in different age groups.

The results are shown in diagram 1.

100,000 94,493 97,908 98,971 90,000 85,874

80,000

70,000

60,000

50,000

40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000

0,000 36-47 months 48-59 months 60-71 months 72-83 months

Diagram 1. Percentage consonants correct (PCC) per age group.

6. Sources

Literature

Donabédian, A., Montaut, A., (2011) Saillance syntaxique et énonciative en hindi et en arménien : vers une définition de la saillance linguistique. In: Inkova, O. Saillance, aspects linguistiques et communicatifs de la mise en évidence dans un texte, Vol. 1, Annales littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté n°897, 169-186

Donabédian, A. (2018). Middle East and Beyond - Western Armenian at the crossroads: A sociolinguistic and typological sketch. In: Bulut, Christiane, Linguistic Minorities in Turkey and Turkic-speaking Minorities of the Peripheries. Turcologica 111, Harassowitz Verlag.

Dum-Tragut, J. (2009). Armenian : Modern Eastern Armenian. Amsterdam, Philadelphia. London oriental and African language library. John Benjamins Publishing, Volume 14.

Ganimian, L. (2019). Adaptation de l’outil d’évaluation Speakaboo en arménien oriental et occidental. Memoire pour obtenir le certificat de capacite d’orthophoniste. Université de Franche-Comté.

Godson, L. (2004). Vowel Production in the Speech of Western Armenian Heritage Speakers. (Thèse, Portland State University)

Hovsepian, A. (2012). Vocabulary Growth in Armenian-English Bilingual Kindergarteners. A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Department of Speech-Language Pathology. University of Toronto.

Kasparian, S. (2007) Langues et identités des Arméniens de la diaspora. État des lieux. Hommes & Migrations, volume 1265, pages 176-189.

Vaux, B. (1998). The phonology of Armenian. Royaume-Uni, Oxford University Press